Ordinary diners who take part in our annual survey each spring review restaurants and leave their feedback, but we also ask them to score restaurants from 1-5 on food, service and ambience. Harden’s then uses an average of these scores and measures them against other establishments in the same price bracket to arrive at the ratings published in the guide and online.

Snippets from some of your feedback may end up in the overall Harden’s review, noticeably they appear in “double quotation marks”. The rest of our pithy, bite-sized restaurant summaries are compiled by analysing the survey data and extracting recurring themes, looking at whether or not a venue was nominated in any of our categories – like ‘favourite’ or ‘most overpriced’ – and, of course, looking at the ratings for food, service and ambience.

The Harden’s ratings indicate that a restaurant is:

exceptional very good good average poor

All reviews are compiled from survey comments and ratings, without any regard for our own personal opinions, except in cases where restaurants are too new to have been included in the survey. If you want the editors’ view on new restaurants in London you can find them in our Editors’ Review section.

Harden's Guides have been compiling reviews of the best International restaurants in Greater Manchester since 1998.

“A truly brilliant addition to the Manchester dining scene, Altrincham Market’s bigger, better sibling” arrives in “a beautifully converted market in Manchester’s Northern Quarter” (a former meat market, empty for decades), providing a “fantastic selection of street food vendors all under one roof”. “It’s a little pricey, but choose from any of a number of cuisine stalls, from Asian buns to fish ’n’ chips, washed down with good wines or Manchester’s own Blackjack craft beers”. It’s “always buzzing”.

This Hale newcomer has created a “lively buzz with its excellent food”, which “combines some South Asian classics with fine Sri Lankan cuisine”. Top Tip: “look out for the hoppers (Sri Lankan pancakes) on a Sunday”.

“Probably Manchester’s grandest dining room (and bar)”, this (sometimes “very noisy”) venue in a refurbished Victorian office building is run by DJ partners Luke Cowdrey and Justin Crawford, aka The Unabombers (and owners of Volta in West Didsbury). The menu of eclectic small plates mostly earns a solid rep from reporters, but results can also be “workmanlike”; “nice Negronis” though.

"A new restaurant every six weeks." This mini-chain from chef Nico Simeone opened in Manchester in Summer 2019 (there are sites also in Belfast, Glasgow and Edinburgh) serves a signature six-course tasting menu, which changes every six weeks in style, cuisine and inspiration, served to 66 diners.